


End of The Great Game

by HighSidhe



Series: Random Snippets and Crossovers [6]
Category: Inception, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Dreamsharing, Gen, Season 2 Never Actually Happens, it's all in his head
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-30
Updated: 2017-01-30
Packaged: 2018-09-21 00:41:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9523706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HighSidhe/pseuds/HighSidhe
Summary: The team gets called in to see what Moriarty has up his sleeves. Things do not go as expected.





	

Ariadne had been the first to arrive, after himself of course. 

"I didn't realize you had an office." She observed, choosing another seat and sitting down.

Arthur inclined his head without looking up from the screen of his laptop. He had the bloodshot look of someone that had been awake all night, although his suit was still as impeccable as ever. "We rent it for when we need to work in the United Kingdom." He explained absently. "It's easier than trying to find an empty warehouse at a moment's notice." He glanced up briefly. "We have these scattered everywhere, actually."

"Can't they be traced?" 

"Probably." Arthur acknowledged. "But we go through several different identities, so anyone digging that deep is probably someone that either already knows who we are, or we're working for in some capacity."

She sat back frowning slightly. "Do you know what this job is?" She asked, apparently deciding to let it drop.

His brow furrowed. "Cobb is being unusually tight-tipped about this one. We can assume that it's not going to be something that we like, or that it's excessively dangerous."

Very rarely did Cobb give them the briefing of a job without first letting him know what they were working on beforehand. It was usually vital to have information about the target before going into the briefing with the rest of the team since all of their roles were dependent on his. That said to him that Cobb knew he was going to have to convince them to go through with this job. 

The last time he had pulled a stunt like that, they had done an inception. He hoped to god that they weren't pulling another one. 

"Or both." She muttered. 

She picked things up fast.

"Or both." He agreed, smiling sightly. 

They both glanced towards the door as it opened and Eames slouched into the room, somehow still managing to make the entire room seem smaller. "My two favorite people." He waved briefly at them.

"You only say that because we keep pulling your ass out of the fire." Arthur grumbled half-heartedly, even as he nodded his greeting.

"Oh don't be such a sour-puss Arthur." Eames snorted as he plopped down in the seat beside Arthur and leaned over his shoulder. "Why the hell are we still doing jobs for him, anyway?" 

"Because he pays us well?" Arthur suggested dryly. 

"That's my motivation, what's yours?" Eames shot back.

Ariadne watched the byplay for a bit, rolling her eyes at the banter. 

\-------------------------

Arthur felt his blood run cold as he got a good look at one of the people in Moriarty's mind. Hastily he dragged Eames back into the doorway before either of them could be spotted. "Change of plans." He told them succintly. "Eames?" 

Eames nodded, and a moment later, his features had changed entirely to resemble that of Sherlock Holmes.

"What's going on?" Ariadne whispered. 

"He's obsessed." Arthur said lowly, trying not to sound as furious as he felt. "Every mental construct of his is going to be the same person."

She nodded, accepting his answer. "So what do we do?"

His lips curled slightly. "Hope we can get out of here before he notices us." He answered. "Eames is the best of us at looking like someone else. I can do it in a pinch, but he's a lot better at noticing the minute details than I am."

"And if he gets caught?" She asked.

"He'll probably get shot. We'd better hope he gets shot, anyway." He muttered in an undertone. He was already getting the idea that this was the last mind anyone wanted to be trapped in.

\-------------------------

Eames was looking at Arthur meaningfully. He gave a slight nod to indicate that he had gotten the message. Eames wanted to discuss the job without the rest of the team present. He was practically radiating fury, although he was going out of his way to make sure that the rest of the team didn't notice. Arthur was one of the very few who probably knew his moods better than he did most of the time.

"We can't go with out initial plan." Cobb was saying. "Moriarty is obsessed, and obsessed people don't react to things accordingly."

"The man with the cheekbones." Ariadne surmised, glancing up from the notebook that she was sketching in.

"Yes." Cobb agreed. "You noticed his mental projections. If we are going to get what Mycroft wants, we're going to have to blend in."

Arthur sighed at that. 

"It won't work." He told them.

"Why not?" Cobb asked.

"I've worked with Moriarty. So has Eames." Eames nodded along. "He's a little like Mycroft, smart. Occasionally observant, but mostly smart. I don't think we would fool him for long, and he knows about dreamsharing."

Therein laid the problem. It was always significantly more difficult to deal with people that were aware of the dreamsharing business. As far as Arthur knew, Moriarty had never worked in dreamshare personally, but he had employed more than a few of their services in order to get results, whether that be planting ideas or getting information. He knew quite a bit about how the business worked.

"He might not have knows what was happening today, but I doubt we'll be so lucky next time." Arthur finished up.

"He also knows how Arthur and I work. He's been in the dreamworld with us before." Eames offered up helpfully. 

"So you think he might figure the two of you out?" Cobb asked.

Arthur nodded. "Almost certainly."

"We need someone he won't see coming."

"Someone that won't mind getting their cover blown." Eames put in.

"I'll do it." Ariadne spoke up. 

"He'll tear you apart, love." Eames told her.

"But he won't know who I am." She pointed out. "Unless you've told him about me?"

Arthur snorted. "One doesn't tell the likes of James Moriarty anything about their family or anyone else they care about. It's a good way of finding yourself permanently in his employ."

She nodded slowly. "So, he won't see me coming and he won't know who I am. What's the problem?"

Arthur sighed. "The problem is that he'll get into your head. By the end of it, he'd leave knowing more about you than you do about him." 

Her brow furrowed. "So I need to watch what I tell him." She surmised.

"What you tell him, what you don't tell him. How you act around him, how you react to what he says. Everything you do will be telling him something."

"So a bit like Mycroft then." She arched an eyebrow. 

"She has a point there." Cobb observed. "It is a bit like hiding herself from Mycroft."

"The difference is that Mycroft won't put a bullet through her head because he's bored." Arthur point out with gritted teeth. 

"Which will just push me out of the dream." Ariadne pointed out.

\-------------------------

Eames was practically radiating fury as the two met up sometime later. His devil-may-care smile had flattened into a scowl as he settled into his chair with a bottle of wine in one hand. "Can we kill him after this?" He asked. He sounded serious.

Arthur was having similar thoughts.

"Can we get away with killing him?" He asked. "I don't want MI5 trying to get me any more than usual."

Eames cracked a smile at that, brief though it was. "There is that." He acknowledged. "Maybe turn him into a vegetable."

"That we can certainly do. We'll just need to go in deep." Arthur frowned.

Eames nodded. "That is true. Tell the rest of the team?"

"Do you think they would be comfortable with that?" Arthur raised an eyebrow at him. 

"Probably not." Eames sighed.

"He's dangerous. To us and to them. Especially if he ever remembers what happened." Arthur observed. "If we take care of him now..."

"We protect them in the future." Eames agreed. 

"Cobb isn't going to like this." Arthur muttered.

"Cobb can deal with it."

"So.. How do we do this?"

They were both quiet for several long moments.

"I have an idea."

\---------------------------

Months pass in the blink of an eye, inside Moriarty's mind. He even manages to convince himself that the reason he isn't so bored is because he's playing with Sherlock. It hadn't escaped Arthur's notice that he barely gave any thought as to how he had 'escaped' from Mycroft's holding cells. Although he did find it intriguing just how much he knew about Sherlock.

And Ariadne has managed to be just enough like Sherlock that he doesn't find her presence suspicious.

He even starts seeking her out, out of all the Sherlocks that dot the dreamscape, barely even noticing the others. She is terrified every time he confronts her, every text, her call. Every 'case' that she finds herself embroiled in.

Arthur is somewhat disturbed by the fact that she can apparently fake even that aspect, although her case-solving skills seem to revolve more around common sense than what Sherlock is actually capable of. Still, with his voice in her ear as she examines crime scenes, it's enough of an act to fool Moriarty into thinking exactly what they want him to.

He's not sure what that says about his deteriorating mental faculties.

Bit by bit, they start noticing other people trickling into his dreamscape. 

It's a sign. Of what they don't quite know yet.

Arthur suspects that Moriarty has been alone for so long, with no company outside of Mycroft Holmes, that he has invented this tale in his head. How else would he explain such shoddy story-telling as using what Moriarty has crafted. It's almost like he's day-dreaming it, rather than actually doing it, and it's pretty damn obvious that he can't tell the difference between the two.

He wonders if maybe Moriarty doesn't have some sort of allergy to the injections they give him. He can't actually bring himself to care though, beyond making sure that he isn't going to die while they are in his head.

He hoped that Sherlock Holmes, in real life, would never be so stupid as to fall for any of this, because that would be beyond sad.

He's not even trying, really.

Stealing the crown and hanging around to be arrested. 

He might once have been an internationally renowned criminal mastermind, but under their careful manipulation, his mind has started to crumble. He has all but lost his perception of reality, just as they had planned. Each session ends with Jim increasingly unsure of which reality is real, and increasingly sure of which reality he would rather be stuck in.

Playing with Sherlock or staring at a blank wall for several hours.

His own mind is practically self-destructing, and all they have to do is give it a nudge.

It's almost sad in a way.

Or it would be if he weren't still very much a threat.

It all comes to head on a rooftop. The poor bastard is so beyond fucked that he and Eames barely have to do anything to convince Moriarty that topping himself will force Sherlock's hand. 

And that's their cue to get out of his mind.

Mycroft is not amused.

"I thought we had an understanding." He said coldly, glancing over at the man who is staring blankly at the wall. Occasionally he blinks, but his breathing is just barely above shallow. He is alive, but he certainly isn't living.

Cobb, for his part, managed not to quiver under Mycroft's cold stare. "That was not on us." He answered flatly. "He did all that himself."

Arthur spoke up. "He genuinely thought that he was living out his ultimate plan, which apparently ended in suicide on top of a hospital roof." He explained. He didn't feel the need to explain the rest of the whole mess. 

Mycroft looked taken aback. "Why would he do that?"

"He was using that to force your bother to kill himself." Eames told him lazily. "At least that was what I understood of the mess. Really, it was starting to devolve there towards the end."

"He needed help." Ariadne looked shaken by the whole thing. 

"You did good, Ariadne." Arthur told her. "He believed it right up until the end."

**Author's Note:**

> Not beta'd. 
> 
> I couldn't figure out how to include this without shoving it in awkwardly so here goes:  
> Arthur is a Holmes.   
> Eames is a Watson  
> Ariadne may or may not be Susan Pevensie
> 
> that's pretty much it


End file.
